“We were really exploring that concept for ourselves, spending time alone, solitude, silence, stillness…that was the way to access that inner voice…It does feel that those two really do go hand and hand; that spending time alone is the way that we are able to get quiet enough and still enough to hear a true inner voice, our intuitive voice.”

Janet Lucy and Terri Allison started formulating the idea for their book Moon Mother, Moon Daughter almost twenty years ago, when their daughters were still young.

This week, the co-authors join Dr. Viado to discuss how their desire to share their own experiences of womanhood with their own daughters developed into the spiritually focused coming-of-age guide they jointly authored.

Terri Allison was a founder and executive director of Storyteller Children’s Center, an early care and education program for children from 18 months – 5 years old.

She is now an early childhood education consultant for Transition House, Santa Barbara school district, and other local preschools. In addition to a Multi-Subject Teaching Credential, she received a Post Graduate Certificate in Infant-Parent Mental Health from the University of Massachusetts – Boston.

Janet Lucy is the founder and director of Women’s Creative Network. She facilitates creative and professional development through writing workshops. She is also the author of The Three Sunflowers, a children’s book for all ages.

Janet holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from Antioch University and a California Teaching Credential from UC Santa Barbara.

She offers individual consulting and counseling, weekly groups and international writing retreats in Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru and Italy.

10:30 – “Our challenge, so to speak, was to find a way to really invite our daughters into a positive experience with their first menstruation and then let that also carry them into the coming-of-age process.” – Janet

11:40 “I did several moon groups with young girls…It was amazing to watch these girls, of course they were tentative at first and their moms were there, but as we, every week that we did the moon group, the structure was the same and then just watching them relax into it. And then their wisdom that came through through the rituals, I learned more from them than, you know, I could have from their moms or even the things that I brought and it was really, you know, it’s there. We just need to let it, provide a space for it to emerge, the essence of each girl came to that circle and it was incredible.” – Terri

12:30 “That was one of the most exciting things…Terri was offering a lot of ideas to the girls and we didn’t really know how that would translate but as Terri mentioned, what came through them seemed so organic, so natural. You know, their spirituality was right there. It just needed that container, a really safe container to express itself.” – Janet

15:30 “Each chapter is really an aspect of the divine feminine and that’s what we were looking for, how to illuminate the qualities of the divine feminine not only to our daughters but certainly for ourselves.” – Terri

17:09 “Interestingly, at the time that Terri and I were researching and experimenting, exploring, all these ideas for the book, you know, we were sort of coming-of-age ourselves. We were coming-of-age into a new stage of our lives but it was a time when we were really just, you know, starting to awaken to a new authenticity of self and so we were making these discoveries within ourselves and then looking for how we could share them with our daughters in a way that they would understand and you know, as Terri mentioned, it was just so fascinating to see how innate it was in them already.” – Janet

18:48 “One of the things that happens to young girls is they begin to doubt themselves, you know because if you look at like a five or six year old, they’re just going to tell you what they think…As time goes that becomes less and less apparent and so it really is a time to, especially given the age and the decisions and choices that girls are going to have to make, it’s so important for them to be able to really listen carefully to what their inner self is telling them so just to kind of name the thoughts that you have or to have girls actually honor those little voices…” – Terri

21:40 “At the time that we were writing the book, we were really exploring that concept for ourselves, spending time alone, solitude, silence, stillness…Those were relatively unfamiliar concepts and not even readily accessible at that stage of our family lives but that was one of the observations that we were making, is that that was the way to access that inner voice…It does feel that those two really do go hand and hand, that spending time alone is the way that we are able to get quiet enough and still enough to hear a true inner voice, our intuitive voice.” – Janet

24:05 “One of our primary calls, beside the age and development of our own daughters, one of our primary calls to write the book was based on the book by Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia in which she illuminated all the that ways girls lose their voices and lose connection to their true selves and so that became really so important, it was such a big focus for us.” – Terri

27:25 “It’s such a double edged sword because, you know, when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, women were coming into their bodies and, you know, we didn’t even talk about it, we didn’t talk about our bodies and then there was this wave of showing bodies and honoring bodies and it’s so interesting to watch how mores change and how we go through these cycles and right now with social media, everybody can appear perfect and nobody’s is perfect…so I think you’re right, it is a tough time and a very significant and important topic to be continually talking about as girls come of age and as women come of age.” – Terri

29:04 “One of the most exciting things we found in the writing of that chapter was the myth of Gaia and we were able to make that correlation between the earth and the female body and all the ways that women’s bodies are natural and naturally beautiful in every shape and contour and size and that was really what we wanted to focus on, you know, and to illuminate all the ways that we are influenced by the media and advertising but that was the beauty really of having these goddess myths because we had these ancient archetypes that we could reference, you know, for pretty much every quality or every topic that we we exploring.” – Janet